Jim MacInnes – Entropy

Transcript:

energy-101.org : Why don’t you give me the basic definition of entropy in that second sense, the statistical version? Give me a sense of what you mean by entropy. How does that relate to this whole idea of energy and what we buy and what we live with?

Jim : Well, entropy is basically a concept of science and physics. It talks about things going from a high order to a low order, or high energy to low energy. We have a business here, and if you were to just let it go and not maintain it, it would go to a high level of…It would be disorder, go to a high level of disorder. So one thing we have to do is we have to keep putting money and energy into our business, into our buildings, our chair lifts, all of our equipment in order to keep it maintained. And so it takes energy to do that.

energy-101.org : So why do you feel like that’s an important concept for people to understand?

Jim : Well, I think it’s important because all of the physical things that we have are degrading. If you were to leave a building alone, or anything alone, over time it will degrade. And so we have to use some of our limited energy supplies in order to just keep things maintained at status quo. And if you have fossil fuels, which are finite resources, we’re going to have to keep calling on those fossil fuels and using them and putting them into the machinery, equipment, and buildings that we already own just to keep them current and updated and operating properly.